“In what way?” asked Hal, meeting a grip like iron from the stranger.  “News?”

“News!  I guess not.  Business, I said.  Real money.  Advertising.”

“It’s like this, Mr. Surtaine,” said L.P.  McQuiggan, turning his spare, hard visage toward Hal.  “I’ve got some copper stock to sell—­an A1 under-developed proposition; and your father, who’s an old pal, tells me the ‘Clarion’ can do the business for me.  Now, if I can get a good rate from you, it’s a go.”

“Mr. Shearson, the advertising manager, is your man.  I don’t know anything about advertising rates.”

“Then you’d best get busy and learn,” cried Dr. Surtaine.

“I’m learning other things.”

“For instance?”

“What news is and isn’t.”

“Look here, Boyee.”  Dr. Surtaine’s voice was surcharged with a disappointed earnestness.  “Put yourself right on this.  News is news; any paper can get it.  But advertising is Money.  Let your editors run the news part, till you can work into it. You get next to the door where the cash comes in.”

In the fervor of his advice he thumped Hal’s desk.  The thump woke McGuire Ellis, who had been devoting a spare five minutes to his favorite pastime.  For his behoof, the exponent of policy repeated his peroration.  “Isn’t that right, Ellis?” he cried.  “You’re a practical newspaper man.”

“It’s true to type, anyway,” grunted Ellis.

“Sure it is!” cried the other, too bent on his own notions to interpret this comment correctly.  “And now, what about a little reading notice for McQuiggan’s proposition?”

“Yes:  an interview with me on the copper situation and prospects might help,” put in McQuiggan.

Hal hesitated, looking to Ellis for counsel.

“You’ve got to do something for an advertiser on a big order like this, Boyee,” urged his father.

“Let’s see the copy,” put in Ellis.  The trained journalistic eye ran over the sheets.  “Lot of gaudy slush about copper mines in general,” he observed, “and not much information on Streaky Mountain.”

“It’s an undeveloped property,” said McQuiggan.

“Strong on geography,” continued Ellis. “‘In the immediate vicinity,’” he read from one sheet, “’lie the Copper Monarch Mine paying 40 per cent dividends, the Deep Gulch Mine, paying 35 per cent, the Three Sisters, Last Chance, Alkali Spring Mines, all returning upwards of 25 per cent per annum:  and immediately adjacent is the famous Strike-for-the-West property which enriches its fortunate stockholders to the tune of 75 per cent a year!’ Are you on the same range as the Strike-for-the-West, Mr. McQuiggan?”

“It’s an adjacent property,” growled the mining man.  “What d’you know about copper?”

“Oh, I’ve seen a little mining, myself.  And a bit of mining advertising.  That’s quite an ad. of yours, McQuiggan.”

“I wrote that ad.,” said Dr. Surtaine blandly:  “and I challenge anybody to find a single misstatement in it.”